War in Afghanistan

Introduction

The greatest threat to long-term success in Afghanistan is not the Taliban, who are fairly weak compared to other insurgent movements around the world. It is the Afghan government's endemic weakness and the international community's failure to address it. Although the international community helped rebuild economic institutions and infrastructure and facilitated elections, it did not invest significantly in government ministries, the justice system, the army and the police, or local governance for the first five years of the intervention, which permitted the Taliban to regroup and challenge the nascent Afghan government.

If additional U.S. and nato soldiers are matched by a comparable civilian surge, a continuing donor commitment, and a heightened focus on capacity development-increasing the capabilities and performance of civilian institutions of governance, including the ministries in Kabul, their provincial counterparts, and the legal system-the international community is likely to achieve its core goals and Afghanistan will have a genuine chance of becoming stable for the first time in a generation. Although serious challenges remain, victory is attainable-if the troops and their civilian counterparts are given time to complete their mission (Goodson, 201).

Discussion

Rebuilding Prosperity

In response to the economic and humanitarian emergency in Afghanistan in 2001, the international community undertook one of the largest and most ambitious relief, reconstruction, and development efforts in the world-eventually committing a total of $18.4 billion in aid to economic reconstruction, economic development, and humanitarian relief between 2001 and 2009. The donors invested heavily in rebuilding the Ministry of Finance, the Central Bank, the Treasury, and the Customs Department and helped phase out the old Afghan currency and launch a new one (Goodson, 201).

The result was an unheralded and dramatic success. Partly because of U.S. and international aid, Afghanistan experienced a post-Taliban economic boom.Real gdp grew by nearly 29 percent in 2002 alone-faster than West Germany in 1946-and averaged 15 percent annual licit growth from 2001 to 2006, making Afghanistan one of the fastest-growing economies in the world .The pace of its growth was due in part to the low base from which it had started, but the rapid pace itself was an important achievement. Afghanistan had not grown significantly in more than two decades; the economic boom signaled a new era in Afghan life (Holmes, 51).

Meanwhile, infrastructure greatly improved with international help. The U.S. Agency for International Development (usaid) built 1,600 miles of roads, and the international community rebuilt three-quarters of the main highway from Herat to Kabul. In total, almost 33 percent of all roads in the country were paved by 2008, up from 13.3 percent in 2001. By 2008, Afghanistan had caught up to its regional and income cohorts in access to telecommunications-an astonishing feat. The cell-phone industry, nonexistent before 2001, had nearly eight million subscribers by the end of 2008. At the same time, the construction sector tripled in size, donors spent $312 million on water projects, and the number of Afghans with access to water more than doubled, from 13 percent to 27 percent. And access to sanitation rose ...